New chef at CIA’s signature restaurant vows to create 'best restaurant in the city'

Zach Garza is the new executive chef of Nao Latin Gastro Bar, the signature restaurant of the Culinary Institute of America - San Antonio.

Zach Garza is the new executive chef of Nao Latin Gastro Bar, the...

A new name, new chef and new approach mark a restart for Nao, the signature restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America-San Antonio. The restaurant now will be Nao Latin Gastro Bar, and its new menu aims to make a lunch or dinner experience more affordable for repeat visits. It opens later this month, but the CIA hasn’t announced the date.

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Zach Garza, new executive chef, returns to where he received some of his early, formative training. He went through the San Antonio program in its early days and earned a certificate before transferring to the CIA’s main campus in Hyde Park, New York, for his associate’s degree. He later went to Texas Tech for his bachelor’s in restaurant, hotel and institutional management.

Garza helped open Nao under its first executive chef, Geronimo López, and then went on to helm the kitchen at The Monterey, The Frutería and Primero Cantina at La Cantera Resort.

Here, Garza speaks about the restaurant’s new direction and what his experience will bring. By the way, the name has a new pronunciation, from “NAY-oh” to “now.”

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The biggest thing is the name. It speaks a lot. We talk about a gastro bar, and what does it mean as opposed to a gastropub? For us, it’s about really striving for excellence in the food and cocktails equally — having an exceptional wine list that really celebrates and represents fairly everything that Latin America has to offer, selecting beers from all over Latin America, and celebrating the local bounty of San Antonio and Texas in all of those areas. The food has always been really important here. We really want to focus on bringing and elevating the cocktail program and the bar program in general to that level.

If you want to come in and have a $60 steak, that option will be there. We’ll have a really nice rib-eye steak on the menu. But you can come in and have 3 to 4 dishes for $8-$10 and share between two people and walk away satisfied, and you just had dinner for 15 to 20 bucks (each). To me, that’s reasonable, especially considering the area.

What’s your role in all of this?

First and foremost, I’m a curator and a facilitator. We have worked really hard to put a team together that’s very strong and confident in their abilities to bring ideas to the table that are going to start a conversation. We have to be pushing for excellence. It’s not something that happens once in a blue moon, you work for it every day. Constantly pushing and re-evaluating, that will be my primary role.

We want to do something different here than it was before, certainly different from anything in the city. But we won’t settle for anything less than the best restaurant in San Antonio. Period, the end.

Cooking and Recipes

We have a lot of stiff competition. There’s a lot of talented chefs and restaurateurs here, but we’re the CIA, we have to be. There should be no question when you walk in that the CIA represents excellence, and we have to exude that through the food and attention to detail.

Tell me about your own background in Latin American cooking.

My grandmother was Mexican. She was from Mexico City, and she (lived) with me in the home. She’s the one who instilled an appreciation of cuisine in me from a young age. Looking back on it, I didn’t realize what we had. We weren’t eating frozen fish sticks and Lean Cuisine for dinner. She would make paella on a Wednesday night.

Having those influences — mostly Mexican but also Spanish and Italian — for me, being able to work here sort of reignited an interest in getting back to Latin roots. So much of my training before that was European influence. When I served here as sous chef, it sparked this curiosity about how there’s so much beyond Mexico City.

How have the different places you have worked contributed to your development as a chef?

Being at Nao during the first go-around set a high bar. (Geronimo López) is a great chef. When you work for the CIA, there’s a certain level of professionalism and decorum that’s expected of you. That established a baseline of respect for the craft and the tradition and the history of what we do.

Being at The Monterey was my first opportunity as a chef de cuisine role. It was all mine, with all of the challenges that come with it. It was a lot of fun. (Restaurant partner Chad Carey) is a great facilitator and curator. You come to the table and say, “Hey, this is what I was thinking. What do you think?” and he’d say, “I think you can do better.”

There, I was able to flex my creative muscle a little bit and push the boundaries. Having the freedom to fall on my face — and I did a couple of times — helped me push myself creatively and understand what it means to really find inspiration, also learning where to draw the line.

(The Frutería chef-owner Johnny Hernandez) has such an eye for the details. He’s not only a great chef, he’s a great businessman and leader in the field because of the way he’s able to conceive a creative vision for a concept and see how every detail fits. That’s what I learned from him — understanding that the food is only a small part and how the food fits into a larger experience.

Primero was my opportunity to practice some of what chef Hernandez demonstrated to me. I walked in, and they had a space, a rough concept. My job was to take the space that we were in — the physical space and the space within the marketplace — and tie the food into that. I built that from the ground up, the food in particular. For me it was The Frutería meets The Monterey.

When the CIA called you to offer the job, what went through your mind?

What flashed through my mind was the journey. It started in New Orleans because that was where I first enrolled in a cooking school. It was after Katrina, and it had to close because there were too few students. That’s where I first realized this is what I wanted to do.

But it really took hold here. What came to mind was that journey over the past eight years and how far I have come in a relative short period of time, and I have respect for the fact that I still have a long way to go.

This is a homecoming. I get to come home and represent my alma mater. How incredible that is. I couldn’t say no.